Construction Workers Skills Register launched to help improve building standards for new housing

Wednesday 27th July – A Construction Workers Skills Register (CWSR) was launched today to allow construction and craft workers to register their skills and demonstrate their ongoing commitment to continual learning in their careers.

The CWSR is a pilot online platform that allows construction workers to display their training history to potential employers. It also aims at raising awareness of the value of training and skills development in the construction industry.

With the government strategy on housing committed to building 25,000 houses each year by 2020 and a perceived shortage of skills in the sector, the register is intended to give confidence to construction employers and the general public of the skills and competence of those they employ.

The CWSR register will complement the existing Construction Industry Federation operated CIRI register of competent contractors and companies by also providing a register for individual construction and craft workers.

To register, construction workers must complete a minimum of Safe Pass and either a QualiBuild Foundation Energy Skills (FES) course or a QualiBuild Train the Trainer course. These are designed to bring them up to date with new low energy construction standards and new ways of working together on site to achieve better quality.

The live register has been developed after extensive consultation with the industry including tradesmen and construction workers. They all highlighted the need for a transparent register to encourage a culture of upskilling amongst construction workers.

This follows on from the training of over 200 construction workers on a new pilot Foundation Energy Skills course in low energy construction. A further 70 construction trainers have been trained on the QualiBuild Train the Trainer course to allow this course to be rolled out nationally over the coming year to all construction and craft workers operating in Ireland. These will be delivered through IoTs, ETBs and private trainers.

The courses were developed as part of a European wide drive to upskill construction workers to meet the needs to build to the new Nearly Zero Energy Standards (NZEBs). Under EU law, all new buildings must be Nearly Zero Energy Buildings by 2020 and all buildings acquired by public bodies by 2018.

Pat Barry CEO of the Irish Green Building Council stated “We are in a rapidly changing construction industry and construction workers now need to stay up to the minute with changing standards in energy efficiency, as the houses built under the new Government strategy will be built to a standard far higher than anything seen during the last boom. This register provides the transparency that they are doing just that”.

The register was developed by the Limerick Institute of Technology, Dublin Institute of Technology, Institute of Technology Blanchardstown and the Irish Green Building Council as part of the Qualibuild project. The Qualibuild project was funded by the Intelligent Energy programme of the European Union. Further information on the project can be found at www.qualibuild.ie.